Begun with a speech by Vito Russo, Letters enjoins a chorus of speakers to
sound off on AIDS, love and death. Impelled with a variety of formal
procedures, this series of mini-portraits is generously furbished with found
footage extracts, hand processed dilemmas, home movies, super-8 psychodramas,
pixillated phantasms, intergalactic warfare and a hot kiss in a cool
shower.
After all these years of watching movies even my dreams are filled
with title sequences and flashbacks. So six months ago, when I thought I was
dying, I just kept seeing a marquee with the words Show Closing Final Weekend
flashing on it. And then one day the words stopped and I got better. It's funny
because I didn't really feel relieved or ecstatic, mostly it was just
disappointing, because it meant going on, and it was just easier not to. I
started thinking of the 800 breakfasts that waited for me, or the nine months
in your life you spend brushing your teeth, or how many times you'd have to
stand with a big dopey grin on your face in place of conversation because all
of the words you once knew have flown south for the winter.
And then two weeks ago it happened again, the dry cough and night sweats
and Trevor your doctor is saying, "I'm not being alarmist am I?" as he sends
you off for the chest x-ray which will show that you've got pneumonia. Again.
You go home and lie in a small pool of your own sweat before John comes over
with flowers he's picked from the police station up the road. "Government
buildings" he says, "always have the best flowers." He holds you and makes you
promise not to leave and that's when you realize that you don't own your own
death, that it really belongs to others as a kind of last gift, as the last
thing you're able to chip into the pot. And you look into his eyes knowing that
death isn't final after all. And that the angels aren't ready yet. And then you
fall asleep.Mike Hoolboom: born 1959 in Toronto. Performance group White
Noise Labs 1978-80. 45 experimental films since 1980.
Canada 1996
16mm, col., 15:00
Director, Cut: Mike Hoolboom
Screenplay: Mike Hoolboom, Vito Russo
Camera: Steve Sanguedolce, Mike Hoolboom
Music: Earle Peach
